Although I have had this story in my head since I first saw the movie a week after its release, I was unable to take the time to write it until now.

Written on the assumption that there are a number of sorcerers in the world, the Merlinian and Morganian Orders, and that the Merlinians make some effort to organize themselves into local groups, or Circles.

Disclaimer: I make no claims to ownership and no profit.

Music: Royal Scots Dragoon Guards - Amazing Grace (YouTube)

SKYLINE

A 9/11 Tribute

Dedicated to all those who lost.

May you find peace.

Leaving his apprentice behind on the rooftop, Balthazar let the steel eagle wing him away, soaring over the familiar, glittering landscape of the city he had called home for nearly a century and allowing his mind to drift.

It was not until he was nearly over top of it that he realized what seemed amiss - the skyline he knew so well had been fractured, the towers that anchored it swept away.

A swift twist of his mind urged the eagle to where the two buildings should have stood, knifing into the clear sky, but instead, there was... nothing. A gaping hole, edged with twisted metal, was torn into the ground where the Towers should have been.

He had lived to see centuries pass, kingdoms rise and fall, buried his Master and lost his friends. But somehow, seeing this, this void where such pride had once been, struck a cold knife through his heart.

A touch - his hand was steady, always steady, even if he was shaking within - had the eagle turning, and Balthazar closed his eyes and cast his senses out.

It took longer to find her than he had expected.

Alira had always been good at hiding, but she seemed to have made an exceptional effort this time. It took Balthazar three hours of searching up and down the island before he was finally able to urge the eagle to land, sending it away again as soon as his shoes touched the cracked asphalt.

The building he had landed in front of was a narrow, unassuming facade, much like his Arcana Cabana had once been. A neatly hand-written sheet of paper was taped to the window, listing enough varieties of tea to make even Balthazar's head spin, and the Merlinian circle was etched into the window-glass of the door.

Wards tingled and sparked against his skin as he reached for the doorknob, but they were there as alerts, not shields, and the wrought-iron handle turned easily in his grasp.

A deep breath, in and out, and he carefully pushed the door open and stepped within.

The building was, in many respects, much like his old shop. It was the same narrow, old-fashioned design, cluttered with a mishmash of curiosities that might or might not have had any particular purpose other than occupying space.

Unlike the Cabana, though, everything in this shop was immaculately clean and scrupulously organized, if one looked hard enough to discern the pattern behind it. The books on the polished mahogany shelves were sorted - no doubt in a method that would give librarians heart failure, but sorted nonetheless. The 'curiosities' were distributed with the dross in the most visible spots, the treasures neatly hidden so that the unwary would be unlikely to stumble upon them. There was a neatly-organized little sitting area - a few round tables and a cluster of elegantly plain wooden chairs, all tucked up next to a short counter in the back. The shelves on the wall behind the counter held enough tins of various teas to leave even a born Englishman reeling, and a half-dozen kettles of various descriptions lined the marble counter below the shelves.

"I was expecting you a bit sooner, Balthazar."

"I got a little held up, Alira." Without so much as blinking, he turned to face her. She'd aged since he'd last seen her, more than the ten years he had spent in the Urn should have accounted for, and her eyes were tired.

"So I understood. We did tell you that no good would come of having that Urn in a public location, Balthazar." Stepping sideways around him, she scooped up the smallest of the kettles, a brilliant copper one, and filled it from a filter-pitcher sitting next to the sink. The string of runes tattooed around her left wrist caught the light as she set the kettle on a hotplate, but she twitched her sleeve over them without a second thought. "I suppose I should apologize for us not having found you sooner, but by the time we realized what had actually happened, the contents of the store had already been auctioned off."

"Not your fault," he answered absently. "Alira, what happened to the Towers?"

Dark green eyes flashed up, and he drew a soft, startled breath at the shadows behind them. She stared at him, her face as blank as the silence, until the kettle let out a piercing whistle that made both of them wince. A deft hand plucked it from the burner even as two mugs floated their way out of the draining rack beside the sink, settling neatly on the counter beneath the tea-shelves.

When both of them had settled at one of the little round tables, respective cups of tea in hand - lapsang for him, and something in her cup that he couldn't identify, nothing like the jasmine she had always drunk - she met his gaze and clearly, steadily recounted the events that had happened less than a year after his imprisonment in the Urn. Terrorist strikes, hijacked planes, the destruction of the Towers, and the deaths of thousands. When she was done, he sat in stunned silence, his tea cold in his hand, as the weight of it settled on his heart.

"How many?" he asked, when he found his voice again.

One dark eyebrow raised, weary. "Altogether, two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six. Of us? One hundred and twenty-four."

A shock of ice went through his body. "That's nearly half the Circle."

"More."

"What do you mean, 'more'?" he snapped, leaning forward. When her only answer was to turn her head away, he slammed his hand down on the table, wisps of green flame dancing from between his fingertips. "Damn it, Alira! What do you mean, more?"

She looked back to him then, and Balthazar felt himself go numb at the sight of tears tracing silent lines down her cheeks. He'd known Alira for over two decades, ever since she had been accepted to the Manhattan Circle of the Merlinian Order, and in more than twenty years, he had never once seen her cry.

"Balthazar," she began, her voice heavy but startlingly level, "you disappeared minutes after placing what amounted to the world's largest bulls-eye on an untrained ten-year-old who had never so much as dreamed of magic. The Morganians realized you were gone at the same moment we did, and they knew, just as we did, that if they were to kill the boy then, the Merlinian Order would fall."

Her mouth twisted as she kept speaking, and he realized, for the first time, how dark the shadows of grief and anger were behind her face. "The Circle was left with no choice but to protect the boy. You were the only one who could train him, and yet you had vanished, stuck inside a gods-forsaken jar like a pickled toad, leaving him utterly defenseless! You didn't even take the time to ward the child, Balthazar! We had to throw everything, everything, that we had into protecting him!"

The furious, rising rant was cut off by a harsh gasp of indrawn breath, a tearing sob. "We lost..." she whispered. "We lost a hundred and eighty of our number in that first year you were gone. And when September eleventh happened... we had no choice but to act. If nothing else, we had to block the Morganians from battening on the death-energy released by the attacks, lest the overwhelm us with it. But it cost us, Balthazar. It cost us very nearly everything we had."

Somehow, in his heart, he had known that the news would be harsh, but he had never expected this. The Manhattan Circle, once the largest and most powerful division of the Merlinian Order in the world, had been reduced to...

"Six," she said softly. "Only six of us are left. Myself, the twins, Dari, Adon, and Dari's apprentice, whom you've never met."

From three hundred and fifty-seven... to six.

"Wait," he said softly, when a flash of memory touched him. "Your apprentice. What happened to her?" It was easy to remember Alira's pride in the girl; Lisa had been sweet-natured and incredibly gifted, and the respect and admiration between Master and Apprentice had been a joy to behold.

Dark-shadowed green eyes flickered to him again, and the pain at their depths was heartbreaking. "Lisa was the first of the Circle to die. She intercepted a Morganian master the night you vanished and dueled him to save the Prime's life."

Pushing back from the table, Alira collected their cups and stood, her gaze heavy on him for a long moment. "I arrived at their battle just in time to watch Lisa burn to death from an inferno spell. I was able to avenge her, but that has been a cold comfort in my nightmares."

"Alira, I -"

A sharp wave of her hand cut him off. "I hope this boy is everything he needs to be, Balthazar. We've given everything to keep him safe."

And with that, she walked away, leaving him alone in the echoing silence of the shop as she climbed the stairs, no doubt heading for her rooms and another night of restless, too-haunted sleep.

The cold grey of predawn found Balthazar standing back at Ground Zero, his gaze unfocused as he stared into the hollow of losses past.

He was as close to immortal as any human could be; it was perhaps the greatest curse ever bestowed upon him. He had watched centuries pass, lost more than he could ever define, but his mission - to find and train Merlin's successor - had forced him to put the grief aside, to carry on regardless of his feelings, and carry on he would. A decade had been lost, and it was time he truly could not afford to spare.

But right now, he would take an hour, one more hour, and stop pushing aside the pain of all he had lost.

Bowing his head to the shattered ground, Balthazar Blake allowed himself to weep.

~ END ~